Mycological System

A

Lycoperdon Puffball. Linn. and Linnaeans (the greatest part, with Clathri lattice-fungi and certain Mucores molds added.) — Dermatocarpi Trichospermi skin-fruited hair-seeded etc. Pers. syn. p. XV — XVII. Gasteromyci stomach-fungi, ser. 1, 2. Link. diss. 1. in Berl. Mag. f. Naturf. Freund. 1809. p. 24 — 32. (excluding Calicium, Trichodermaceae and Mucorini) — Gasteromyci Mycetoidei fungus-like stomach-fungi. Link. diss. 2. l. c. 1815 (for the greatest part). Gasteromyci. Nees Syst. p. 92 — 138 (for the greatest part). — Gast. Trichospermi. S. M. I. p. XLIX.

CHAR. Peridium the outer fungal wall or skin (i. e., the uterus constituting the receptacle) genuine, contiguous, sometimes double, dehiscing splitting open when adult and pouring out copious, naked, powdery sporidia fungal spores. Sporidia somewhat large, subglobose, heaped in the center, loose, interwoven with more or less shaped flocci cottony or woolly threads or discrete. — Texture subvesicular having small bladder-like cells. — Gleba the spore-bearing internal tissue included within the peridium is pulpy before the maturity of the spores; often the entire young Fungus is mucilaginous.

ABERRATIONS. Two subterranean genera do not dehisce spontaneously. — In Batarrea, which is a Phallodeum stinkhorn-type genus by vegetation, a discrete receptacle is present. In a few, flocci are transformed into an inner peridium; in the lowest, they sometimes abort, which aberration, however, is rare and no more essential than, for example, the defect of petals in the first order of the genus of more perfect plants, which is otherwise corollate.

AFFINITY. The order is central among the Gasteromycetes, exceedingly natural, easily distinguished by copious loose central spores and a genuine contiguous peridium. It passes, however, into two suborders, as similar in fructification as they are diverse in vegetation, for which reason they must be treated separately. From this order Calicium must be strictly excluded, as it is a Lichen lichen by its entire vegetation — nor does the excipulum of the Calicia have an affinity with the peridium; besides, the evolution of the spores is different. Mucorini recede as much by vegetation as by the defect of a genuine tissue of the peridium. — Perisporii and Angiogastres with spores that are not powdery, Trichodermacei, to which I also count Asterophora and Onygena, are easily distinguished by an imperfect peridium. The Trichospermi cannot be confused with others.